They say that many people with Bipolar Disorder are creative. I always wondered if this were true. Within myself I could never see my creativity. I could not play music, I was not crafty. In retrospect I can see my creative outlet has always been writing. My love and knack for writing began around the time I experienced my first true mania, although I never knew it was mania at the time. Retrospect is a very powerful thing.
I never knew I could write, or rather, I never knew I wrote well. I went to appointment after appointment with my psychiatrist or my psychologist for therapy and they always praised my writing. I just thought they were being polite.
You see, I found it hard to talk during these appointments. So we decided I would write between sessions and during my sessions I would read what I wrote and they could ask questions if need be. Reading what I wrote made it much easier to express myself to them because it was like I was disconnected from the situation, reading someone else’s story.
I continued writing through my teens and into my adulthood. I have written pages and pages, books on top of books worth of my thoughts.
I never shared my writing with anyone except various therapists or psychiatrists through the years. It has only been recently, during a manic phase that I found the courage to begin Bipolar Whispers and began putting my writing out there.
At times when I am writing and my pen flows across the paper so freely or my fingers fly across the keyboard so quickly that I re-read it days later and I do not remember writing it. Yet there it is, staring back at me in my hand writing or illuminated on my computer screen.
It is like my hands have a mind of their own and they know that the words are inside my head waiting to be formed into some semblance of coherent sentences.
Then there are the times when my mind is so crowded with manic thoughts and ideas that my fingers are going across the keyboard making mistakes because they are going so fast while I am trying to form paragraphs that make sense.
Half started ideas, fragments of paragraphs dancing across the screen. Black letters swirling, flying across the editor as I write, correct, fix the mistakes my fingers are making.
To say it is frustrating would be an understatement. But I am writing. I am in bliss and I am happy.
Writing is a form of therapy for me. When I re-read what I have written I can feel what I have felt, or even feel what I wasn’t able to feel at the time it was written.
You see, writing for me is like breathing. It is not a want, but instead a necessity. Each letter, each word, each sentence, each paragraph, all a part of my existential self.
I never knew I could write, or rather, I never knew I wrote well. I went to appointment after appointment with my psychiatrist or my psychologist for therapy and they always praised my writing. I just thought they were being polite.
You see, I found it hard to talk during these appointments. So we decided I would write between sessions and during my sessions I would read what I wrote and they could ask questions if need be. Reading what I wrote made it much easier to express myself to them because it was like I was disconnected from the situation, reading someone else’s story.
I continued writing through my teens and into my adulthood. I have written pages and pages, books on top of books worth of my thoughts.
I never shared my writing with anyone except various therapists or psychiatrists through the years. It has only been recently, during a manic phase that I found the courage to begin Bipolar Whispers and began putting my writing out there.
At times when I am writing and my pen flows across the paper so freely or my fingers fly across the keyboard so quickly that I re-read it days later and I do not remember writing it. Yet there it is, staring back at me in my hand writing or illuminated on my computer screen.
It is like my hands have a mind of their own and they know that the words are inside my head waiting to be formed into some semblance of coherent sentences.
Then there are the times when my mind is so crowded with manic thoughts and ideas that my fingers are going across the keyboard making mistakes because they are going so fast while I am trying to form paragraphs that make sense.
Half started ideas, fragments of paragraphs dancing across the screen. Black letters swirling, flying across the editor as I write, correct, fix the mistakes my fingers are making.
To say it is frustrating would be an understatement. But I am writing. I am in bliss and I am happy.
Writing is a form of therapy for me. When I re-read what I have written I can feel what I have felt, or even feel what I wasn’t able to feel at the time it was written.
You see, writing for me is like breathing. It is not a want, but instead a necessity. Each letter, each word, each sentence, each paragraph, all a part of my existential self.